Interactive Chart on State Unemployment Rates

Here’s a great chart showing how states’ unemployment rates have fared, compared to the national average, between 1976 and 2012. You can isolate specific states, time periods, and view the underlying data. As you can see, North Carolina’s rate was below the national average until 2000, dipped again between 2005 and 2006, and has been on the climb since 2007. Click on the link provided in the caption to see the interactive chart.

How far would you travel to find work? Annual unemployment relative to the national average since 1976 for every US state

Joe Mako has used Tableau to plot unemployment relative to the national average for every US state between 1976 and 2012. The aptly named horizon chart represents values using both colour and dimensions. In this case orange and red shading indicate an unemployment rate above the national average, while shades of blue show the inverse. A coloured area’s height corresponds to the numerical value for that year, and where a shaded area reaches the top of its vertical scale an area in a darker tone is overlain showing the same again. Note the spike in Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina. Joe used Jorge Camoes’ data from excelcharts.com to make the visualization.